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Zcash has been one of the best performers of the year, outperforming majors like BTC and ETH during the recent market downturn.
But behind the scenes, it doesn’t seem like the user base has caught up with its stratospheric rally.
Zcash’s privacy model makes it difficult to gauge adoption using standard blockchain metrics. The chain supports transparent and protected transactions, and only the transparent side of the network can be observed directly.
A growing share of activity now occurs within protected pools, where addresses, amounts, and flows become invisible to public analytics. This means that transparent metrics primarily capture exchange-related activity rather than Zcash’s entire user base.
The only visible increase in visible throughput came from Zerdinals, a wave of signups that temporarily pushed daily transactions above 70,000. Transparent Senders, however, remained in a tight range of 8,000 to 14,000 throughout the event, suggesting that the rise was due to a small group of regular players rather than strong growth in new users.
Shielded activity cannot be measured directly, but it alone is unlikely to explain a sevenfold increase in transparent throughput. Once the registration wave passed, transactions returned to previous levels.
Behind the scenes, Zcash is regularly migrating to the Orchard protected pool. The protected supply has grown from around 1.2 million to over 4 million ZEC over the past few years, and the share of fully protected transactions has reached record levels.
Zashi’s unified addresses, auto-shielding, and default private UX seem to push more flows into the protected pool. These trends demonstrate true private sector adoption, even though they leave virtually no imprint on transparent graphics.
If there was a broad resurgence of interest in privacy coins as a category, Monero would likely show that as well.
XMR remains the dominant pure privacy asset, and its transaction count captures all usage, as each Monero transaction is private but still counted at the protocol level.
Yet Monero throughput has remained within its usual range of 20,000 to 30,000 daily transactions, without a parallel increase in activity. This stability reinforces the idea that ZEC’s move is not part of an industry-wide shift toward privacy, but a Zcash-specific pivot driven by its liquidity profile, diminishing visible supply, and improving the protected UX narrative.
Zcash and Monero are not directly comparable because their privacy designs differ, but neither shows a measurable expansion in users.
Zcash’s transparent data shows no clear increase in new participants, while protected activity remains intentionally hidden. With around 30% of supply now in protected addresses that cannot be held on exchanges, the resulting supply squeeze is causing prices to move faster than the visible network can explain.
Until these trends on the private side can be corroborated by user behavior, merchants will likely pay a significant premium for ZEC.
Market movement
BTC: Bitcoin is trading near $86,800 after returning its Nvidia-led rally above $93,000.
ETFs: Ethereum is hovering around $2,850 after falling below $2,900 as the FG Nexus selloff added pressure.
Gold: Gold is trading around $4,077 after returning its pre-NFP gains, sitting around 7% below its October high but still on track for a more than 50% annual increase.
Nikkei 225: Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell 1.58% as rising inflation in October bolstered expectations of BoJ rate hikes and officials expressed fresh concerns about the weak yen.
Elsewhere in crypto
- Crypto Lobbyists Ask Trump to Get Things Done During Congressional Uncertainty (CoinDesk)
- Ray Dalio owns Bitcoin. He’s still nervous about quantum computing and central bank adoption. (Decrypt)
- MegaETH to open pre-deposit window for million-dollar stablecoin next week (The Block)
